source file: mills2.txt Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 21:26:32 -0700 Subject: Re: Post from McLaren From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@compuserve.com> I found Bill Alves' comments on innovation in University Music education a welcome dose of realism. It's good to hear an insider's take on where some of the difficulties lie. Even though my formal Music education (beyond untold hours of private lessons and reading on more advanced topics) stops at the traditional Freshman and Sophomore Theory and Ear-Training classes, I've seen a lot of what Bill's mentioned from a student's perspective. Many of us have I'm sure. One factor in all of this that I find encouraging, perhaps surprisingly or even ironically, is community colleges. They have some advantages over full-blown Universities with regard to innovative curricula: 1. In most US states anyway, they are paid by enrollment, so they are always scrounging for ways to keep students' interest rather than to weed them out. 2. They have somewhat less pressure to provide specific knowledge to feed into Junior- and Senior-level courses. 3. A fair percentage of their student body consists somewhat older adults who are taking music (or whatever) courses simply because they want to, rather than to begrudgingly fill some required slot in the curriculum. 4. Most community colleges have fewer distractions (football for one, but let's not get into that!). 5. Since they lack the tenure system, they're a little more open to hiring innovative instructors. Of course, they have disadvantages as well, especially the overall quality of student (and instructor to a fair degree) they attract. Some are quite good though, my bassoon teacher back in high school was one. Well, it's something to bear in mind anyway. Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Thu, 6 Jun 1996 18:18 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id JAA06916; Thu, 6 Jun 1996 09:18:36 -0700 Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 09:18:36 -0700 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu